General > General Technical Chat
"Gas Armageddon": Energy/electricity prices in EU/UK (and how to deal with them)
james_s:
--- Quote from: madires on August 31, 2022, 01:58:30 pm ---It's part of the problem. But subsidies too. Over here we have program to promote heat pumps (subsidies up to 40% (was even 50% not long ago)). Besides the poor availability of heat pumps at the moment, the program keeps the prices high. There's no incentive or need for competition. I guess, there's no direct monetary loss for customers because of the high subsidies, but it's still tax money.
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There are subsidies for heat pumps and high efficiency gas furnaces here too. The problem is they require installation by a licensed professional contractor in order to qualify for the subsidy. It is much cheaper to install the equipment myself and skip the subsidy than to hire some goober to charge me a fortune to mess up the job. The rare occasions when I have hired a contractor to do something I have never been totally satisfied with the result, very few take the pride in quality craftsmanship and attention to detail that I do.
tom66:
UK homes have energy ratings too, from A to F if I recall correctly. Our home is a D currently. Adding solar panels and insulating it properly will get it up to B. It requires a huge amount of effort to get an older house to A, and is probably not worth doing.
The sad thing is new homes are being built with C rating, and this is the plan until 2035(!!), ours is 90 years old and it has only one lower rating, wtf?
richard.cs:
--- Quote from: tom66 on August 31, 2022, 03:24:00 pm ---UK homes have energy ratings too, from A to F if I recall correctly. Our home is a D currently. Adding solar panels and insulating it properly will get it up to B. It requires a huge amount of effort to get an older house to A, and is probably not worth doing.
The sad thing is new homes are being built with C rating, and this is the plan until 2035(!!), ours is 90 years old and it has only one lower rating, wtf?
--- End quote ---
The UK scheme also rates by energy cost, rather than energy input, so a home with a more expensive energy source can get a lower score even if it is better insulated.
Another weird artefact of the UK rating scheme is many new-build developers hit the minimum rating by means of adding some trivial amount of solar panels, just enough to scrape through and no more (see here https://goo.gl/maps/qqpsC5M4pH9XzyTEA as an example where most properties have 2 or 3 small panels as a box ticking exercise). These tiny panels then make it much harder for an owner to install a sensible-sized PV system because they're in the way and built into the roof.
nctnico:
--- Quote from: tom66 on August 31, 2022, 12:40:24 pm ---
--- Quote from: nctnico on August 31, 2022, 10:41:42 am ---That is something else and IMHO very unlikely to happen because it means the electricity generation & distribution is falling short (as if you are living in a third world country). In the end you can't predict peak demand. Over here the trains are on strike so everybody who has a car, goes to work with a car. How to plan for that with a system that inherently isn't able to deal with peak demand?
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It's already happening!
https://octopus.energy/intelligent-octopus/
These are not the only guys offering it.
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No, this is just optimisation for cost, not for optimising the load on the infrastructure. There are a lot of places where the grid just can't handle the amount of renewable energy being generated. So the electricity comes for free but there is no way to get it to the outlet where you need it.
--- Quote from: tom66 on August 31, 2022, 03:24:00 pm ---The sad thing is new homes are being built with C rating, and this is the plan until 2035(!!), ours is 90 years old and it has only one lower rating, wtf?
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That is insane! The additional costs to build a home with an A rating will be earned back quickly. I mean, how much does it cost extra to make the insulation a few cm thicker and install a ventilation system? My home is nearly 30 years old and it has an A rating (partly due to being on district heating though).
madires:
--- Quote from: Siwastaja on August 31, 2022, 02:24:48 pm ---
--- Quote from: madires on August 31, 2022, 01:19:26 pm ---Proper insulation is a prerequisite for heat pumps.
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Where is this meme coming from?
These things (heatpumps, insulation) are totally orthogonal.
Quite the opposite, (e.g. ground source) heatpumps are specifically being recommended here in old, poorly insulated buildings (with maybe some historical or sentimental value); of course, because poorly insulated houses consume more heat, there is more (absolute) potential for savings.
For example, a well insulated house needing 9MWh/year of heat, heatpump with COP=3 saves 6MWh/year of energy. A poorly insulated house needing 27MWh/year of heat, heatpump with COP=3 saves 18MWh/year of energy.
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Of course you can argue that with any COP/efficiency better than simply burning gas or fuel oil you'll need to buy less energy. But why stopping there if adding insulation lowers that dramatically more? So you can pay for a proper insulation or have to buy more/larger heat pumps to get the heat power needed. Without insulation you'll also need a higher flow temperature to keep your home warm (limit of typical heat pumps is about 40-45°C). The next point is that all the additional required electricity has to be generated. This will not happen over night and we don't have fusion power plants yet. It's about the whole strategy!
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